The experiences in World of Warcraft through the eyes of a player that can't spend 10 hours a day raiding.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Wow Web Stats

I'll admit it: I'm a numbers guy. It's part of my nature at this point. After years of creating and analyzing reports, I don't think I could help it if I tried. So rather than shun this fact, I embrace it wholeheartedly. But being that I create reports for upper management, I'm also aware of the necessity to keep report meaningful.

That said, I have to go on record and say that I kind of hate in-game damage meters. It's like you're seeing one small piece of this really huge pie. Hey! That rogue did the most damage; he must be the best. It's like only looking at the revenue of a company's profit and loss statements. Oh great! This company is making millions of dollars! Of course, they're spending billions, so they're really deep in the hole, but who cares, right?

Enter Wow Web Stats. This tool gives an amazingly detailed and useful tool in analyzing your raid or group. You can sort the stats in many different ways. You can see individual players and down to the level of each spell. How much does that Fireball crit for in one night? How is the healer's HPS? Who over-healed the most? Which mage was removing more curses? The stats just go on and on. It really provides more of a true picture than just who was the top 3 on the meters.

It's really quite easy to set up and do. You simply type /combatlog while in game. (Note: each time you want a new combat log, you have to manually delete the old one.) Wow will tell you where the combat log is being generated. (Wow folder/logs if I remember correctly.) Once you're finished, you can type /combatlog again, and then get to work creating your report. You can even have multiple people gathering data and combine it in one report for increased accuracy. All the details of what to do and how to create the report can be found over at the WWS site. You can also see an example of how a report looks.

As I posted on our forums when I linked to our raid last night, my numbers are gonna be skewed. I only had one source gathering the data (me), and I died the most because of silly things on non-boss fights (6 times). So, as I was ghosting back into the instance, I wasn't capturing data. Basically, it probably made me look better then I was, but the boss fights would have been dead on.

That said, I didn't think the sync'ed damage meters (SW Stats) were that far off, but I also wasn't looking at them very much.

If we get a few more to do /combatlog tonight, we'd have a better picture.

Don't worry about it though, bud. Look at the whole picture. ;) And besides, Crimzn beat all 4 of us.

I'm not so much worried about being #1 on the meters anymore because I know I'm never going to get there, but it is nice to be able to see how a respec stacks up against the rest of the comparable DPS (Sirsha, Kathyra, Leiandra, Lichas). Just looking for something accurate I guess. If it will help I'll download SW Stats and try to not die ;)

Hey Leiandra I made a post about your spell rotation, dmg, etc. I'm not sure if you saw it so I'm gonna Hijack here and let you know :) so I can hear your feedback.

Also for what its worth I really like dmg meters. I use it to try and push myself. I realize I'm not the best geared, and most likely will not end up on top just because my damage capability is not as high as some others. I'm very competitive in nature and this adds just a little excitement and fun to the raiding experience for me

Lichas: Good point about respecs. I thought you were running SW Stats. Yeah, that one seems to be better than Damage Meters because it syncs... hmm.. maybe that'll have to be another blog topic soon.

Sirsha: I saw it... forgot to comment on it.. will do that soon.

Elinor: I think that was the point I was trying to make, which puts us on the same page. Highest HPS but 99% overhealing is stupid. Even this report doesn't tell the whole story though. Where does it say that Notlok was shackling ghosts? Or Lichas and Kathyra had to tank one of the ghosts with Moroes? It provides a better picture, but yes... there's still more to be considered.

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About Me

I am the Guild Leader of Primogeniture, a raiding guild on Bronzebeard. Most of us have significant others and families, so we mostly devote our night hours (and lack of sleep) to working together. I've been playing for 3 years now, and have leveled multiple toons to cap.